From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: gregg.drwho8@gmail.com (Gregg Levine) Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2017 23:53:37 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Why Linux not another PC/UNIX [was Mach for i386 ...] In-Reply-To: References: <20170222220320.mxcjnenf5y2k25qt@ancienthardware.org> Message-ID: Hello! And as it happens, I downloaded a two disk job and found it ran on my first P100 system. I eventually tried others and much the same style as some you. I've been running Slackware since they packaged the 2.2.xx series. I still do. However I've got a Sun SPARC box here, who's happily running Solaris 10. ----- Gregg C Levine gregg.drwho8 at gmail.com "This signature fought the Time Wars, time and again." On Wed, Feb 22, 2017 at 6:29 PM, Clem Cole wrote: > Arno - thanks for more on this, as I think you scratched a difference > between your experience and my own. > > By the time Linux shows up in the early 1990s, people like me had been > developing UNIX for a long time and the novelty of hacking on the system, > making changes, bug fixes was gone. I just wanted to use it on a PC/386. > > BSD for the 386 worked and so Linux was a step backwards and I was only > going there because I felt I needed too. I remember when I first got > Slackware running, after the trying Linus's 0.9 mumble release.... and it > actually sort of ran ... saying "maybe this will work" but then I start > running it issues such as I could not back up it like my other systems, > network hosed up, few scripts "just worked", etc.. > > Yet, one of my coworkers who was about 2/3 years out of school at that > point, thought Linux was so cool because of all things Arno suggested. He > could submit bug reports and he changes go in. When I was b*tching about > something breaking, he would say - "Clem you know how to fix it And I > would reply "yup I do. But I don't want to." This was a the system I > wanted to use ( at home ). I get paid to hack at work. I wanted a > DOS/Windows alternative for home that I could rely on. I was not looking > for a yet another system to do development (I had that). > > Which shows that difference... I was part of Chet's club, so I was hacking > on UNIX already, and I did not need/want another system at home to hack just > to keep my day to day working at home (or my wife being able to print things > etc). The point was that I did not mind fixing the occasional thing I ran > into with BSD - but those problem were few and usually had to do with new > device bring up. But once something was was running, I could just use it. > But the Linux systems I could not do that - they were very fragile, so it > was not "fun" -- it was work. > > That was probably different for many of you. Linux was fun and cool, just > like UNIX had been for me 10-15 years earlier in the mid 1970s. > > Clem >